Juan Williams, Racism, and the American Work Ethic

Newt Gingrich may have just regained some ground with his recent performance at the South Carolina debate. Fox News contributor Juan Williams (pictured above) asked Gingrich a question about his recent insensitive comments about low-income families and putting children to work as school janitors in order to teach them a better work ethic. He earned himself the only standing ovation of the evening.

As I watched the clip, the premise of Juan’s question struck me more than Gingrich’s response: “… I gotta tell you, my email, my Twitter account has been inundated with people of all races who are asking if your comments are not intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities… It sounds as if you are trying to belittle people.”

This puzzled me. In an economy where more people have sought welfare than any other time in history, it makes sense that people need to find jobs not just for their own benefit, but to ease the massive financial burden assumed by the government to fund these programs. And yet somehow, Juan Williams is concerned not with the viability of Newt’s proposals, but the implication that those proposals are belittling, racist and classist?

The History of Fixing Racism

There is no question that minorities in America have been at a disadvantage when it comes to matters of employment in the past, and recent government employment data suggests that they still are. The issue of minority employment has been a part of the American struggle for racial equality since the end of the civil war. Two competing voices within the black community rose up in the late 19th and early 20th century that advocated two entirely different thought processes and approaches to resolving that issue.

Booker T. Washington, who was born into slavery and eventually rose to prominence as an orator and leader within the black community, laid out the first approach in his 1865 Atlanta Exposition Address. His speech advocated that blacks should build up their status within the South by establishing themselves within industries in which they already possessed skills such as agriculture mechanics, commerce, and domestic labor.

Though Washington was aware of the sensitive issue of race in the South, he equally concerned with guaranteeing that the black community was well-established economically. “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.”

Others were more concerned with guaranteeing that blacks were given equal social status to match the freedoms they earned following the Civil War. Chief among these was W.E.B. Du Bois, who responded very critically to Washington’s work as little more than keeping blacks down as submissive members of society. He, along with other black leaders that he refers to in his book The Souls of Black Folk, argued that Washington’s approach would not be sufficient in the long run to guarantee political and social equality for blacks in the South. He wrote, “if that reconciliation [between North and South] is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington.”

Economic Consequences

In light of Jim Crow laws and segregation of public institutions, which placed increasing restrictions on black civil liberties, the argument made by Du Bois was appealing. Desegregation became the policy of choice, and political force was applied to ensure that minorities had equal access to civic resources, private businesses, and other institutions.

Over time, policies like desegregation that were intended to help minority communities began to inflict several harsh and unintended consequences. Economist Brooks B. Robinson detailed how some of these consequences affected black businesses in his paper “What Could Have Been: Macrosimulating the Economic Injury Caused by Desegregation.” According to Robinson’s calculations based on a comparison of 1969 and 2002 Census data, the percentage of black-owned businesses with employees dropped from over 27% in 1969 to under 8% in 2002. He estimated that, had the 27% held into 2002, potential receipts to black businesses would have translated into $232.9 billion in gross receipts – $167.1 billion more in gross receipts than what they actually earned in 2002 – and an average increase of $4.7 thousand dollars in income to each employee.

Government welfare programs stepped in to fill the financial gap created by negative consequences of desegregation. Such support is entirely artificial: if that aid money disappeared tomorrow, there would be no structure in place to support those communities.

But that begs an additional question: why haven’t minority communities– or really, any community that heavily collects welfare – filled that gap on their own?

Social Reasoning

Psychologists Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend write in their best-selling book, Boundaries, that people are hardwired over time to respond to what they call “boundaries” – limitations on and consequences for unwise or inappropriate behavior. In cases where a lack of limits is present, an individual is not encouraged to adopt disciplines or behaviors that might be better for them.

In this scenario, the government has adopted the role of parents who repeatedly clean up after the mistakes of their children. By increasing welfare programs to accommodate the needs and wants of minority communities, the government has created a situation in which people are isolated from economic and social realities. There is no incentive to change behavior, so there is consequently no improvement in communities that continue to benefit from large-scale welfare intervention. This has long been the position held by economists like Walter E. Williams, who has argued that welfare programs have crippled the black community.

By overly embracing external political solutions to race issues rather than encouraging economic and social development within minority communities, the government created a situation in which minority communities were isolated from economic and social realities. These unintended consequences resulted in the suppressed development of those communities economically and, as a result, contributed to an environment of systemic dependency that has continued until the present day and has spread to people of all races and ethnicities in America.

Booker T. Washington’s warning has, regrettably, become a reality.

A New Direction

Real solutions cannot come from Washington bailouts or grand social programs, but must come from individuals and communities that work to improve their own lives and prospects. Gingrich’s proposal is one possibility that allows kids to begin the long process of improving their own lives by developing a strong work ethic. However, if the concern is placed more on the social meaning of the jobs given to the kids and less on the value of the jobs themselves, it proves that we have not grown and learned from our own history.

It could even be argued that the response of many critics to Newt’s comments and proposal are evidence of a different kind of racism: just as it is racist to target minorities as stereotypically recipients of welfare, it is racist to assume that references to food stamps or manual labor jobs automatically are automatically a veiled reference or insult to minorities. The bad economy has hit everyone equally, regardless of race, and old stereotypes about who suffers more or who wants to oppress who are no longer accurate or productive.

About The Author

David Giffin (@D_Giffin) is a recent graduate of the Wake Forest University School of Law, and also holds a Masters in Theological Studies from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been with TheCollegeConservative since early 2012, and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief.
In addition to writing and editing for TCC, David has also written as an op-ed contributor for The Emory Wheel student newspaper, and served as the Candler legislative representative for the Emory Graduate Student Government Association. More recently, David served as the President of the Wake Forest Law chapter of the Federalist Society.

4 Comments

Definitely believe that which you stated. Your favorite reason seemed to be on the internet the easiest thing to be aware of.

I say to you, I certainly get annoyed while people consider worries that they just don’t know about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top as well as defined out the whole thing without having side-effects , people could take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks

Africa for the Africans,Asia for the Asians,white countries for EVERYBODY!

Everybody says there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.

The Netherlands and Belgium are just as crowded as Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them.

Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites.

What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries?

How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem. I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem?

And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this?

But if I tell that obvious truth about the ongoing program of genocide against my race, the white race, Liberals and respectable conservatives agree I am a naziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.

I appreciate Juan Williams’ drive to try to look at all angles of a subject and to introduce logical reason over emotional thought whenever possible, but he fell significantly short of that goal in this instance. It’s absurd to assume that Gingrich was referring to minorities, or more specifically, blacks, when discussing low socio-economic families. In fact, it gets quite tiresome listening to media figures label others’ remarks as “racist” when the assumption of race came from the media itself.

More importantly than all of that, however…I personally worked as a “janitor” in order to put myself through college. I saw no shame in it. I worked hard. I collected fair pay. In fact, I sometimes look back on it as the best job I ever had. I wasn’t wealthy, by any stretch of the imagination (I drove a 10+ y.o. car that I bought for $1,000), but it was a manual labor job. I showed up. I worked. I went home. I felt a decent sense of accomplishment over what I had done each day and I made enough money to support myself at that time in my life. By no means, however, did it limit my potential in life or how I saw myself.

Thirteen years has passed since then and I’ve gone on to earn a master’s degree, get married, buy a house, have children, etc. I live in a nice neighborhood, have a place to live, food to eat, a car to drive…the American dream. In fact, I ‘ve learned that having a higher degree can get you jobs that pay more money, but it also comes with more stress and usually longer workhours. Boy am I glad that nobody ever told me that janitorial work was demeaning or beneath me as a white person. Where would I be now?

Excellent article. People like Juan Williams get too much face time on TV, and people like Walter Williams do not get enough time on TV. This provides an adverse result for all, regardless of the skin color.